June 12, 2025 Washington, DC — In response to this week’s congressional hearings on the Department of House and Urban Development’s (HUD) FY26 budget request, LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit provider of aging services, including affordable housing for low-income older adults, voiced serious concerns about the department’s direction and commitment to older adults amid the drastic funding cuts put forth in the White House’s budget proposal and demonstrated lack of clear planning.
Noting that the HUD proposal, which requests zero FY2026 funds for its own administration of housing choice vouchers, Section 8 project-based rental assistance, Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities, and public housing programs, makes clear the current administration’s priorities and essentially undermines efforts to preserve and expand affordable housing, Linda Couch, Senior Vice President, Policy, LeadingAge said the lack of substance in Secretary Turner’s testimony Tuesday, June 10 and Wednesday, June 11, reinforces that message.
Pressed by members of both parties during the hearings on aspects of the impact of HUD’s sweeping proposal to eliminate long-standing, effective housing federal programs and roll them into a block grant to states with 42% less funding than HUD has in FY25 for these programs, few details were offered. When pressed on how the plan would avoid catastrophic increases in homelessness, the Secretary’s responses boiled down to: “Let’s run a new play. It’s not about the money.”
Yet as House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro pointed out on Tuesday, the ‘new play’ proposal has no structure, no funding numbers, and no clear protections for the more than 10 million people—primarily older adults and people with disabilities—who currently rely on HUD’s housing assistance. Repeated questions from members of both parties were met with vague deflections or no answers at all.
“Let’s be clear: HUD’s FY26 request, if enacted, would destabilize the housing safety net, push millions of vulnerable people into homelessness, and dismantle decades of progress. LeadingAge shares lawmakers’ bipartisan outrage—expressed repeatedly during the hearings—at HUD’s proposal and its dangerous implications,” said Couch. “HUD’s FY26 request is not a new direction—it’s a roadmap to displacement, instability, and preventable suffering. Congress must reject it.”
